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AVIAN FLU FEAR UPPED
By J. Grant Swank, Jr.
MichNews.com Jan 26, 2006

.. "If we had a significant worldwide epidemic of this particular avian flu, the H5N1 virus, and it hit the United States and the world, because it would be everywhere at once, I think we would see outcomes that would be virtually impossible to imagine," warns Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.

Avian flu could cause a billion humans to die globally, according to ABC News. That is why this week the Bush administration set in motion stockpiling $100 million worth of medicines. However, the vaccine is still in the experimental stage.

"Right now in human beings, it kills 55 percent of the people it infects," says Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow on global health policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. "That makes it the most lethal flu we know of that has ever been on planet Earth affecting human beings."

British officials are now spying out extra morgue square footage to those who would die because of the H5N1 virus. This virus type is brand new to the human race.

.. What concerns government officials worldwide is that many do not understand the magnitude of the problem. Newscasters are reluctant to hammer away constantly on the issue. Even politicians do not want to appear extremely panicky about avian flu. And therefore, nations go on their ways as if all is normal, no threat in sight, while huge populations remain uneducated about what could happen this winter.

Add to this the fact that the medicines are not equipped at present to combat the pandemic. Widespread disease occurrences would be practically impossible to ward off. That would mean that alarming numbers of humans would die without the hoped-for vaccine.

.. Thus far, infections have come from birds. But once the virus leaps from birds to human to human, then the pandemic sets loose. That would over-ditto the Spanish flu outbreak in 1918.

The avian flu could travel around the planet in a very short time. That is due to international air travel.

People would carry the virus on their hands. Therefore, shaking hands could spread the disease. Door handles and so forth could carry the virus. Whatever is touched could be contaminated.

Such widespread sickness could force blocking off entire geographies so that persons, quarantined, could not go out while others could not go in. Airports, interstates, subways, schools, shopping malls could end up blocked off to entrancing and exiting. Persons could be corralled with strangers who could be disease carriers.

The frightening prospects are numberless: no place to bury the dead. No one to bury them. Not enough caskets. No persons to provide decent burial rites. Orphans. Elderly struck down with no medical assistance. Hospitals shut down or quarantined.

Further, when the avian flu first hits, persons may think it to be the "old-fashioned flu." Therefore, it could spread quickly with persons not realizing the enormity of the danger. As a major killer disease, it would be subtle, indirect and especially cunning at its entry levels.

US Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt says: "We would do all we could to quarantine. It's not a happy thought. It's something that keeps the president of the United States awake. It keeps me awake." Leavitt says that he wishes there were more time left to perfect a solution.
ABC News’ "Primetime" broadcasts that a couple hundred thousand in the United States could be killed by the avian flu in "a few months." Even that number is regarded as low.

Everyone will be asking for the vaccine. But it won’t be available. When the vaccine finally is up and running, the supply will not be sufficient. Tamiflu by Roche pharmaceutical firm in Switzerland is on to a vaccine. It’s been marketed for flu. It was thought it may work against H5N1. Therefore, every aware nation was requesting Tamiflu in stockpiles. Only the rich countries, however, could get it. Even then, the supply was not up to what would be the demand. However, now it is believed that Tamiflu will not overtake a mutant virus.
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